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  #1  
Old 24.10.2014, 06:07 AM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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Default Why a lot of modern electronic (and other genre) music sucks

Lately I've been listening to some really old school trance. The art has been mostly lost, so you have to be willing to listen to retro trance to even understand what it was all about. When you try to explain it to the up and coming generation of wish-they-could-be toddlers, they utilize their early-learned flame skills to debate the matter with you, because after all, the keys on their keyboard are the same size as yours even if their e-penis is not quite as lengthy as their life experience.

I see music as something parallel to home construction. I have a friend who lives in a home that is 80 years old. The windows are original construction material, yet they still function perfectly. The sashes are almost certainly covered in multiple layers of lead-based paint, but they are made of wood that was harvested from naturally grown trees. These days, most windows (if they are made from wood at all as opposed to plastic) are grown from trees that are genetically modified to grow faster, and are cut younger to maximize manufacturing profit. Then when put into practice, in the case of windows at least they are painted or stained with environmentally friendly materials like lead free paint or someone's blueberry stained snot juice that looks great when you buy them but needs full replacement in a decade or so. Full on expendable crap.

So how does this relate to music and where am I going with this?

Music is going the way of rapidly-manufactured building materials. So much information is easily obtained via the web, easily searchable -- why should anyone read and make an attempt to absorb it for life when they know they can search for it later and remember it on the fly as needed?

It is the musical equivalent of genetically modified trees and the building products that resulted from crap wood.

If you listen carefully to vintage trance, you find amazing soundscapes that took many hard-earned hours to sculpt. Then you had youtube tutorials and other BS that came along and said "here's how you do this with Massive in Ableton".

Don't get me wrong. Massive is a great softsynth and Ableton is a great DAW. But then again being able to modify the genetics of tree growth is an amazing achievement too. The important thing is that we understand the consequences of technological progress.

So now, new-school electronic music is more or less "I stumbled across a cool sound and sampled it". Don't think for a minute I'm completely innocent as charged, I do use Maschine and I do occasionally sample things and/or use samples, but sampling and any other technique designed to "speed" music making comes with its own set of consequences. Sampling allows me to create music faster and better, but the music loses a great deal of soul in the process. I'm not picking on sampling specifically, I'm only citing it as one technology that can accelerate music production, and speeding anything up tends to result in the same loss of quality I discussed in the window analogy with genetically modified trees. Soft synths, DAWs and computers, youtube tutorials.... all of these speed the process and result in lowered quality and less actual craftsmanship on the part of the music author.

A lot of synth junkies talk about analog... pure analog, and almost become bigots against virtual analog. Then virtual analog folks become bigots against soft synths.

Then at some point, if they are lucky enough, there is a watershed moment when they realize that the technology behind the music actually matters very little compared to what was going on in the mind of the creator of the music at the time they created it.

Last edited by MBTC : 12.11.2014 at 07:30 PM.
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Old 05.11.2014, 01:02 PM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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There's tons of very competent people doing music today! And tons of interesting music to, if you know where to look! There's tons of huge generalisations in this post of yours mate! Chances are, you're trying to rationalise the lost of the times you felt more identified and inside the circle of what's happening? That's a natural occurrence with the coming of age.

Cheers
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Old 05.11.2014, 02:56 PM
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Originally Posted by TweakHead View Post
There's tons of very competent people doing music today! And tons of interesting music to, if you know where to look! There's tons of huge generalisations in this post of yours mate! Chances are, you're trying to rationalise the lost of the times you felt more identified and inside the circle of what's happening? That's a natural occurrence with the coming of age.

Cheers
I know there are tons of generalizations. It saddens me that they are true.

I'm all too aware of the "nostalgia" effect. I'm not the type to hold onto the past just because its the past. On the contrary -- I love hearing something new and different as long as it's not a substandard knock-off of something that was done previously.

I'm not saying that SOME great music is not still being created, I'm just saying that when I listen to the sources that should be exposing me to good content (satellite radio, Pandora, Youtube, etc), I have to come to the conclusion that most newer music just plain sucks. It could be that I'm not going far enough underground to dig up the real treasures, but that's part of my point -- 30 years ago I could turn on MTV on a Sunday night and that was as far as I had to dig to hear some great new music. It wasn't all great, of course. There was plenty of crap back then too, but the crap did not outnumber the good music 10000:1. I didn't have to spend every waking hour looking for something new and decent.

I'm all too aware of the syndrome of the old man telling kids to get off his lawn. Believe me when I say I have put way more thought into this subject than that.

Being a technologist by profession I am all to aware of what happens (not just to music, but to anything) whenever a technology goes more mainstream, becomes easier to use and more approachable by the masses. That is exactly what has happened to music production over the last 10-15 years. Things like the ability to produce an entire track from a single laptop, vocal pitch correction technology, etc. have made music production so available that there's no stopping the flood of bad music anymore.

It doesn't necessarily mean that no good music is being produced, it just means the signal to noise ratio is no longer in favor of finding the good stuff without a lot of time wading through the bad.

The phenomenon I'm discussing here is not exclusive to music. It happens in many industries over time as an industry matures. Technological advances make certain elements of production easier, resulting in faster production at the expense of quality.

In my first post in thread I used home construction as an example. You sometimes hear people say "they don't make _________" like they used to (insert homes, cars, etc.), and unfortunately most of the time the statement is true. It's not said simply because some old man is waxing nostalgic, it's because there are valid, provable reasons why the quality of build has declined over time. With music of course, we don't have the same level of tangibility, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly what has changed unless you're lucky enough (or unlucky enough I should say) to have the ear to be able to recognize things that have already been done a decade or decades before only better.

So, while I understand you don't agree, you have tempted me that there is this oasis of fantastic music that I just haven't found yet... I will only ask that you point me there so I can experience this for myself. I'd like to believe all these great artists are actually there, and they just aren't trying hard enough to reach me, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Links please?
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Old 07.11.2014, 04:58 AM
passionPunch passionPunch is offline
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This is a ridiculous post. I too tend to listen to what originally got me into the scene, but there is some FINE music being produced. If you look at trance charts it's mostly trash. I have a few favourite racks from this year I really hope you take the time to listen to and hopefully appreciate.

"If you listen carefully to vintage trance, you find amazing soundscapes that took many hard-earned hours to sculpt." It's pretty unfair to assume everyone doesn't do this. I've spent the last two years working on my craft, and sound design is a very important part of it for me. I completely agree that a lot of people abuse the preset and, "I'll come back to this later so I won't bother remembering it." The saddest part about the scene for me is that songs don't last. You write a hit and a month later no one remembers. It just kills me that (me for example) people are so passionate about the scene and you just write everyone off as trash. My life has become Trance, so I hope if I ever write anything decent one day people won't just dismiss me so easily.

Giuseppe Ottaviani - Linking People (2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Sd7-HVJR0

Adam Ellis - Mandarine (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El4T2YRQ4J4

John O'Callaghan - One Special Particle (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-1HwcdLJJM

Sebastian Brandt - Repercussion (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FER38roosgc

Jordan Suckley - Elation / Contaminated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxCm804nW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIR6VBQxGzk

Luke Terry - Ice Cap (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3xzF95YEPg
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Old 08.11.2014, 12:44 PM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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It would be kind of pointless for me to point you some of my own references, as chances are we have very different taste...

One of the points you make is a valid one: there's plenty more people doing music today then there was before. Not just music, there's also plenty more people taking photos and sharing them to! There's plenty more people talking and communicating in a number of ways, such as this one, a public forum. Thus, there's a lot more information sharing. Access to information and technology has made it a lot easier for people to accomplish more and to go after their dreams and that usually means that a lot more people are going to do things that were once, at best, reserved for a select elite of people who had the educational background and, many times, the money to engage in what used to be very restricted activities. Music production is just one of them.

I don't see how having access to information, even if it's about sound design, doing some kind of patch on Massive or something, is necessarily bad! I think people have the opportunity to learn faster, 'cause they now have the means to do so without the need to enrol in paid for, highly expensive, sometimes not so direct, forms of education. If you want to know how, for example, a comb filter works, you can just type it in youtube or google and take it from there. Then it's up to you, as it always was.

However, there's plenty more music and stuff to choose from and it's progressively harder to separate what's good from what's bad - even though this is a highly subjective subject as with all things concerning taste and aesthetics. And this also means that the artist - in most cases - doesn't enjoy a wide market of fans and supporters, that allow him to live of his artistic endeavours.

I think that there's a lot of things that are actually better. Most people look at it from a biased point of view. What I mean is: digital technology (in audio) has always been judged by how it compares to or, worse, how it's able to emulate analogue technology. It was always like that with any new form of technology. History is there to tell you this. But in many ways, digital has allowed us to achieve a level of detail in sound that was impossible to achieve before, among many other things. And there's enough people exploring this in very creative ways and sharing it with other people and many sub genres and scenes are growing with a small number of people whose efforts are being constantly updated among themselves and perhaps even some audience to. This is all good, besides judging how good or how bad some stuff sounds to you and me, this strikes me as a level of connection between people and ideas, procedures, technical info, and so on, that's quite revolutionary by itself.

Instead of complaining about how easy it is to find some "how to" videos online, do a more focused search and you're able to find professional laboured videos and complete courses even of just about any subject you can imagine that can aid you in achieving whatever it is you want. And it's either free or cheap, but it's certainly a lot easier then a few decades before, 'cause it's just two clicks away...

I see a lot of people engaged in actually learning their tools. In learning how to program synths, learning how to mix properly, trying to improve their compositional skills, so forth and so on, that it would be unfair to say that most people rely on presets and formulaic ways of doing things. Maybe there's people doing it, but they hardly get anywhere near a professional carrier doing so. People can tell the difference, 'cause it shows. So the argument I'm making here is that: yes, plenty of amateur stuff out there. But if you spot some name on a lineup, chances are it took some hard work to get there, regardless of our opinion on its aesthetics...

What I see is quite the opposite: I think people now have the tools to learn faster. I think it's easier to engage with other people in learning, doing things together, sharing info. It's also easier to engage with the audiences directly. MTV sucks, but it's their editorial choices that make it so dude. Along with the rest of the big media groups. But now you don't actually need them. You have the means to find, share, make, discuss, comment on, analyse, etc.

The magic is lost is an old and tired argument. Do it like the things you love then! If there's no more of it, then there must be someone out there waiting for it, just like you! Music making is about putting out there the music you wanted to listen to but couldn't find anywhere, isn't it? So keep a positive attitude and enjoy the good parts of it! Cheers
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Old 09.11.2014, 09:22 PM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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Ok, well first I should have probably pointed out that when I said links please, I had no intention of providing feedback on varying musical taste for every link someone wanted to post. So let me say that I wasn't trying to convince anyone they should like or appreciate trance, much less vintage trance.

My point is that most of the great musical ideas have already been consumed. Most of the opportunity for fame, profit, recognition for creativity, etc has been on a downward slide for years, due partially to technology innovations like Napster.

Tweak I don't believe it has anything to do with the sharing of information -- more than thirty years ago I used to run an online forums (they were called BBS back then for those not old enough to remember), and they were quite active among the technology savvy (maybe I should use the word MIDI-heads to describe the musically technological savvy folks, since MIDI was still a relatively new invention back then). I don't think that replacing an older technology like character-based BBS's with web browsers and forums has necessarily had a direct impact, except for the fact that it has enabled a tsunami of people who would have never been technical enough to figure computers out 30 years ago to just walk into an Apple retail store, buy a Mac or an iPad and be "online" in a matter of minutes. Just getting online in the early 1980's was a chore in itself! That pretty much guaranteed that anyone else you interacted with online was of high intelligence. I miss those days.

Anyway, getting back to specific musical taste. I wasn't trying to impose my own musical preferences on anyone else, that's completely beside my point.

I will try to illustrate with an example. Recently I went on a long drive (several hundred miles) with an MP3 thumb drive providing the music to my car. One of the LPs I listed to was "Very Best of Fleetwood Mac".

Now, I realize not everyone likes Fleetwood Mac, but my point is that *IF YOU DO* like them, then you can sit back and listen to song after song, album after album of some of the greatest soft rock ever to grace the human eardrum. Think about what I said. I'm not talking 10 hits. Not 20. Not 30. DOZENS of magical tunes.

How many bands do that these days? If they are able to eek something even worth listening to out of Pro Tools, they are lucky to be a fucking one hit wonder.

I can't turn everyone into a Fleetwood Mac fan, but I could sit here and post links to probably 70 distinct original tracks from them, or the Eagles or some of the other greats that are just mind-blowing displays of talent.

And some of these people are 60 or 70 years old and can still sit down with nothing but an acoustic piano or guitar and a microphone and make their shit sound so good it will leave goosebumps on your arm every time.

And you're telling me there is some other band that has come about in the last 20 years of that caliber?

Sorry. No. Just, no.
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Old 11.11.2014, 01:34 AM
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When people get older they get less appreciative of new things and find comfort in what they know. New versions of what they know doesn't quite cut it for them as they've heard it all before.

I dread they day i don't find joy in new songs, even new pop songs.

My joyus long drive would be listening to hours of what passion punch posted, endless trance tunes i'd not heard before, like a new journey, yeah the same old presets rearranged in a different order with the odd new sound thrown in. Listening to endless Fleetwood Mac would be like HELL to me.
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Old 11.11.2014, 01:36 AM
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Ohh and those one hit wonders you mention are usually made by the same people. Therefore not really 1 hit wonders just different fronts, acts!
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Old 11.11.2014, 01:58 AM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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Originally Posted by mitchiemasha View Post
When people get older they get less appreciative of new things and find comfort in what they know. New versions of what they know doesn't quite cut it for them as they've heard it all before.

I dread they day i don't find joy in new songs, even new pop songs.

My joyus long drive would be listening to hours of what passion punch posted, endless trance tunes i'd not heard before, like a new journey, yeah the same old presets rearranged in a different order with the odd new sound thrown in. Listening to endless Fleetwood Mac would be like HELL to me.
I think you missed my point. I like all the trance passion punch posted, but that's because I like the genre and have an ear for it. That's also why I said I am not talking about a subjective preference for a particular band. I used Fleetwood Mac as an example of a classic rock band that was famous because their music was good -- long before video and MTV became the mainstream. They achieved their success solely because of their musical talent -- talent that does not even require a specific technology, any one of them can sit down on an acoustic instrument and faithfully reproduce their work.

But, it's not about Fleetwood Mac or liking a particular band. That's why I said *IF YOU DO* like them at all, you will find that they have an UNFUCKING BELIEVEABLY COMPLETE catalog of music that is of the same high quality as their major hits. I could say the same of maybe Tom Petty. I know people who think Tom Petty is brilliant, others think he sounds too country or just plain hate his sound. That's fine, but what is undeniable is the sheer quantity and quality that he offers to his existing fans.

In the electronic music genre, I would say maybe Armin Van Buuren is maybe hinting towards that same level of greatness, in the sense that if you like his stuff at all, his prolificacy is starting to approach (at least in quantity) the type of artists I've spoken of... he consistently pumps out music that will usually appeal to existing fans. But we have to be fair and keep in mind he is fundamentally a DJ more than a musician, and what he does is not quite in the same league.

When we say "there is some good music still being made" -- yes, I would agree, but for the most part it seems to be limited to artists that stumble upon creation of a few good tracks by accident. There aren't any left that seem to be able to consistently write amazing music (amazing according to their own fan base -- again further removing the subjective nature of whether one band or another is good from the discussion for obvious reasons).
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Old 11.11.2014, 10:22 AM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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Pointing out some example that YOU feel was legendary and saying everything else falls short in comparison is a very tired and lame argument.

I do think that information sharing and easy access to everything has really helped to push music production, along with dedicated technology for it some steps forward. So my point was, precisely, that easier access to things is not a bad thing. While you seem to recall the days when things were hard enough that only technology literate people would be able to surf the web and only people with a huge investment behind them - which was needed to set up a working studio - were able to make music.

Well, the fact of the matter is: things have changed and there is no turning back. Almost everyone in the developed world has access to the internet these days, interfaces are made with the common joe in mind so as to enable anyone to go ahead and focus on what it is they want to do, rather then on what's under the hood to make it happen. And to some extent, a quick browsing of facebook will easily point out just how much garbage that's brought about - so I do agree with you on that point. But if you look at the bigger picture, then it's quite obvious - if we're not looking at this from a very biased perspective, that is - that things have evolved! And they've evolved towards a much more inclusive and democratic paradigm.

The rest of it is a natural phenomenon brought about by this pandora's box wide open situation. Meaning: that when you have much more people doing what used to be done by a select few, then chances are it won't be possible for the music industry to remain the same. Labels won't be big business companies no more. Their task of finding and supporting artists is much harder. First 'cause there's simply much more to choose from. Secondly, 'cause there's not as much money to be made to begin with. You need a reasonably big audience for one artist to be able to live off what he likes to do best. In a world where more and more people are going for it, this means that not as much is reaching the hands of each of them.

On the other hand, the artists and their audiences have never ever been closer. Being online means that there's no separation. People can follow you and know what you're on about with daily updates. They can try and communicate with you. They can join some crowd funding campaign to finance something they believe in, even the making of a new album - there's just tons of such examples out there. How come is this a bad thing?

And someone else could say to you that there are a lot of artists delivering good music that pleases their audiences today. It's just a matter of taste, you're just rationalising your own taste versus what's up there today and not realising that's what it is. No offence, but that's what it is!
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